This ‘work’ is revolutionary, because it awakens women’s dormant power, working at the ‘underground level’, where the dormant seeds are. We are awakening women’s ‘dormant seed selves’ and witnessing a significant reclamation feminine power.

From the perspective of Deep Ecology the awakening the seed bed, is what happens, or tries to happen, when the Earth tends to and heals the damaged parts of Herself.

If we understand our journey as Womankind trying to heal Ourselves as a mirror the Earth trying to heal Herself – one and the same thing – we can get some clues and confirmation.

Learning from the Earth, The Mother, we need to do as She does – create the conditions that will enable the dormant seeds (women in their power), currently gestating underground, to germinate and rise through the surface and sprout forth!

We are activating the seed bed, singing up the seeds, calling the women, and all we require are the conditions around us that will enable us to grow.

First we need to know we will survive. Then we can heal and then we will know the conditions we require to thrive.

The strongest seeds sprout first and as they re-cover the earth around them the next lot sprout and then the next lot, and so it goes….

And the places in our lives that I see represent the opportunities for this are our transformational rites of passage and our ongoing relationship with a menstrual cycle. To my mind these places represent the gardens, our gardens, where our dormant seeds of power lay……

…………….

I spent the other morning with some wonderful women who are making a movie about birth and birth workers and the illusion of choice.

I had to introduce myself, answer a series of questions and talk about why I left the system and what I’m doing now.

For my introduction I spoke something like this….

I left the mainstream maternity care services, the work of a midwife in hospital, the system as its called, because I am a woman of principles, and the principles that uphold the system are principles I cannot agree with or abide by. At its core, I see it as misuse of power.

I left the mainstream and went to the edge, which at that point in time, thirty three years ago was home birth, and in most modern western cultures would still be seen as the Edge. I lived my exile there at the edge with like-minded folk, unlearning a lot of the patriarchal brainwashing I had been subjected to (without even realizing).

Looking back over these thirty three years and knowing what I know now, I see that what I did by creating the School Shamanic Womancraft, was create a safe camp out on the Edge where the other women who were feeling exiled from the system could safely be – to lick their wounds, to recover from the trauma of their lives, and make some sense of it all, necessary work.

The Edge is a well-known place in environmental work, a place between two different ecosystems, known for plentiful diversity, growth and development.

So, I has become We, and we camp out there on the Edge, a safe place to be, a place where women can be held and heard and heal their wounds, and grow and develop. A place where we can call forth our dormant strengths and power, and call to others to join us, to ‘activate the seed bed’, to live the healed versions of ourselves, instead on unconsciously reinforcing the wounds.

At the School of Shamanic Womancraft, we work with a specific astrological reading based on the placement of three celestial bodies that represent one’s journey of the wounded feminine in one’s life seen through the story of Lilith. The story gives you clues about the feminine wounding you experienced, how you lived that in exile, and the gifts the wound offers you when you do the healing it requires.